What's Up, Buttercups?!

I know, I know; I have been seriously MIA & suck. No worries, as I am told this daily. Well, I'm pretty sure that, "You are meaner than Cinderella's Step Mother!" is at least the 6 year old's way of saying that. Yes, I know this, too: SIX? Wha?

This was taken on the morning on her birthday. This is right after she opened this dollie, who has been named Rosalinda, that I made for her. Her birthday was actually the day after the last day of school, but her teacher still let her celebrate her birthday with her class. I gave her the choice of having whatever cupcake or cookie she wanted to bring in. She chose eclairs. Oh, my young lady with the refined palette!

We had a wonderful but short summer break together. She only had eight short weeks off of school, so we didn't really go anywhere n vacation. We sent her to a wonderful summer day camp on Sanibel Island at the Sanibel Sea School. She spent the whole week on the beach, on a boat, or in the ocean. She loved it. If anyone out there vacations on Sanibel Island, know that they have a year-round program where families can come spend a day at the school.

This is her heading out to watch the dolphins swimming in the wild. This is actually the only way she has ever seen them & she is saying she doesn't really want to go to Sea World in the fall because she doesn't think it is right for them to be kept in small pools when they are "use to having the whole ocean". Again; our little activist in the making.

The second camp she went to was at Florida Repertory Theatre and at the end of the two week camp they performed Seussical the Musical. She can perform on command the entire hour & a half show. I think I can, too. I made this dress (pattern here) for her that has various Seuss characters (fabric here & here) all over it this spring, & I am in process of making one for her little sister, who prefers The Cat In the Hat & Fish.

Speaking of the little sister, she will hereforth be known as MiniHe. Yes, she is still a girl, but just the spitting image of The Huz, so a little version of him. She is every bit the large personality of MiniMe, yet even at not quite two, definitely her own person. Together, they light up my days. MiniMe is an even better big sister than I ever could have imagined. She is patient, loving, understanding, and an excellent role model. I'm so glad they have each other. I wish I had one or the other as a sibling. I am grateful I get to be at home with them.

MiniHe is a big fan of Stitch, as in Lilo & Stitch, & it is quite an appropriate object of her affection, as Stitch has a proclivity for stealing left shoes. I was almost arrested for shoplifting when Violet put some shoes in my bag without my knowledge. She is also a stitch herself, doing things like putting Stitch on the potty, & plopping a piece of brown clay in the bowl so we could pretend he is potty training just like she is. MiniHe is also fascinated with ears. The Huz likes to pretend he stuffs his iphone into her ears, which she buys hook, line & sinker. As such, she tries to put random things in my ears, like brushes. She will brush my hair for hours, which makes me feel pampered but her sweet, gentle little strokes which she takes little breaks from to peek around my shoulder & get kisses.

The reason I have been so busy isn't just because of our sweet girls, however. I am working n building a business that will help us be able to move back to Detroit, and I have just launched it this week. I have a lot of products to add, still, but please check out hoppytoddle the store, here. & by all means, tell your friends! If you have products you cannot live without, let me know about them.

I've missed you, blog friends!

& I didn't need the red shoes to get there

We all got up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport. As soon as we landed, we drove north, to Petoskey, where I was born. We stopped about an hour north of the airport to eat at The French Laundry, what used to be a little restaurant, in the little town of Fenton. I once worked just minutes from the place & they have a sandwich that is probably one of my favorites, anywhere. It's a combination some find weird; chicken salad, cream cheese, red onions, raspberry preserves & leaf lettuce in a whole wheat wrap. I think it's delicious & I cannot quite replicate it. Plus, they have new dill pickles, which I also love & cannot find anywhere in our county. If I could find some decent cucumbers, I'd make my own. But I digress.

As soon as we got out of the car to go into the restaurant, MiniMe immediately noticed the grass. She stood on the sidewalk staring at it, then crouched down to brush her hands over it, calling it "baby grass". She was shocked when I told her she could walk on it & looked at me like I was suggesting she walk on silk sheets. "I know," I told her. "I think it's wonderful, too."

We ate outside. It was about 68 degrees, but it was breezy & sunny & felt like heaven. The food was good, but the service was slow, lousy, & we had a long drive. The drive was surreal. We do have trees here in Florida, but they aren't as tall or numerous as the ones in Michigan. Even in the city, things in Michigan somehow seem cleaner. I have a theory that the process of winter, the freezing & thawing, make everything seem that way, but Florida gets such rain, you would think it'd be a wash. (ha!) As we drove, I felt like I was sitting there with my mouth open, in a haze. I was tired; I only got about 3 hours of sleep the night before, but it was so weird. As my mom moved downstate when she & my Dad divorced, I made this drive many, many times in my life. There were experiences that felt like flashbacks. Little miniscule things I had forgotten; the way sunlight dapples through the leaves of deciduous trees in the afternoon, the feeling of weightlessness for that second when you launch over a dip in the road. They seem so insignificant, but I had not felt them for so long after being a daily occurrence. Like I said, surreal.

Our first destination was the home of my godparents, Craig & Harriet. Their three children are all younger than me, but all grown & gone. They lived right next door to my parents before I was born & though we went through a long stretch of time where we had lost contact, Uncle Craig tracked me down right before I met Biggie & I have never felt anything but love from them. When my Dad died we stayed with them for 3 days & it was a great comfort to me to be with people that were more concerned about my loss; that I didn't have to comfort over their loss. We really just went to be with them, in their home, in that town. Petoskey is a beautiful little town on a bay of Lake Michigan. The views are stunning. It is one of those places that if you visit in the summer you can't understand how it is not overrun with Holiday Inns & high-rise condos. Well, the average snowfall there is such that as a child we had to shovel the snow off the roof of the house so the roof didn't cave in. Most people that live there have snowshoes, because they are needed, & if you don't have a tractor, you certainly seek someone out that does to befriend, because it is inevitable that you or a loved one will need to be dug out at some point. Jobs are scarce there, & although it hasn't had the steep decline of the Southeast part of the state, it has always been of a slower pace, a simpler time.

Even though we didn't arrive until the early evening, it was still warm. MiniMe was amazed at how comfortable it was outside, with more baby grass, the breezes, the lack of the oppressive heat. Biggie looked at the clock at 10pm & was shocked because the sun was just going down. Petoskey is north of the 45th parallel, so in the summer the days are almost 16 hours long. It is something I relished as a kid. Just another one of those things MiniMe is missing out on that she doesn't even realize.

Being with my godparents gives me the illusion of growing up with many things I did not, but easily could have. The illusion that I grew up with both a mother & father, in the same home, for example. The illusion that I belong more to this place than I truly do. Uncle Craig & Aunt Harriet give up their own bed for Rick & I to sleep in when we come to visit them. The simple sweetness of this gesture speaks volumes. I was miserable with an upper respiratory virus while we were there, as was MiniMe. When she took a long nap the second day we were there, Aunt Harriet & I had a nice talk on their deck. She loves me, & I her. It is so nice to be with people that love you & pray for you, even when you speak infrequently.

The second day we were there we went to see my step-mother, Linny. She has been staying in Petoskey, with her own mother, for much of the time since my father passed. The home that was her & my dads' is in a remote town on 3 acres. She fell the winter after he died trying to clear the driveway & they didn't realize until the following fall that she had actually broken her pelvis when that happened. She had surgery to re-break the three places where it had broken & since healed incorrectly, last December. She has been staying in Petoskey, also near two of her three children, all of this time.

Visiting Linny was a strange experience for me. We have both remarked to each other that we both feel that no one else can understand the loss we feel for my Dad as we do for one another. My dad's mom is still alive, & yes, we know that she misses him, too. But her loss is almost as if she has lost a prize possession; something to be angry about, to avenge. I have not spoken to her much since my father has been gone because the conversation inevitably turns to things that were either my dad's or his father's or both & how Linny is not doing as my grandmother thinks she should with these things. I don't think it is any of my grandmother's business, & more over, I think it's a cruel place to put Linny when my dad didn't leave a will. I have developed a policy that I never really thought about that I would keep my mouth shut about things unless it really bothered me or Linny asked me. When she told me last year that she wanted to sell the house, I didn't have a problem with it. She told me the day we visited that she has accepted an offer on the house. I was shocked. The market in Michigan has been nothing short of awful, & as proof, she sold the house for the price my Dad paid for the land alone, almost 20 years ago. I don't begrudge her. It is too much for her to deal with. It's just that her children & grandchildren are already swarming like vultures because they know she will have money & that makes me ill. It's not that I want the money, it's that my dad died on the job. He never got a day off. I want him back & I can't have that. & it is his hard work that paid for that house. I talked to Aunt Harriet & Biggie about it. They understand. It's just one of those things that sucks, I talk about, it still sucks, but it will always suck, so I move on.

After two days of Petoskey, we headed back downstate to stay with my Aunt, MiniMe's godmother, just north of Detroit. We are pretty close, & I was sad that we were only staying with her for one night. She also gives her own bed to Biggie & I when we visit & it doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated. I had made plans to go to dinner with a group of women that evening; my only activity away from Biggie & MiniMe while we were there. Aunt Mary grilled us some steaks & we ate outside. We walked down to the lake, along the shore, & sat in a swing. MiniMe begged Aunt Mary to tell her a story about Sonya. (Biggie frequently makes up stories starring Sonya & MiniMe always requests her. My story character is a girl named Isla, but she's not nearly as popular as Sonya.) Aunt Mary did a splendid job.

I went to pick up another mom that was going to the dinner & Biggie, MiniMe, Aunt Mary & her friend all went to see the movie Up. It was nice to be out, with friends, & know that Biggie & MiniMe were out having their own fun. My ankles were so swollen at this point I had to take up a valuable seat at the table to put them up. I talked with another pregnant mother most of the night, but I still got to get faces to go with names I have known for months. Just to be in a place that isn't dominated by retirees, where I'm not the youngest person in the room besides our kid, was nice.

The next morning we planned on going to eat breakfast at one of my long-missed restaurants then onto an annual tour of my favorite neighborhood in Detroit. I figured out after we got everything packed up to go that I had ruined our plans. I had borrowed my Aunt's GPS to get around the night before, & when I returned it to her car I accidentally dropped the keys to our rental car in her console. She had left for work before we even got out of bed & wouldn't be done until after lunch. I figured out where she worked, called her there, & yes, that's what happened. She called her friend who came, got the keys from her & then brought them to us. It wasn't a total wash. MiniMe spent our time waiting laying in the baby grass, rolling down the hill. Although, we didn't get to eat at that restaurant, (The Breakfast Club, for my Metro Detroit readers), & just typing about that makes my pregnant belly rumble, my mouth water.

The tour was my favorite thing that we did there. It was stressful, at times, wrangling a somewhat bored preschooler through meticulously maintained homes. The number of times I reminded her to "look with her eyes & not her hands" was too numerous to count. She was frustrated because the lure of these homes to her is the fact that they have an upstairs & I believe only one home on the tour had the upstairs open. But doing the tour changed our plans as a family. We strolled through the neighborhood, in the supposedly Most Dangerous City in the Country, with no fear. We walked under trees old enough to be taller than the houses, past houses with shiny windows, in gardens with peonies and dahlias. Biggie told me if I can find a way for us to afford it, we can move there. While my taste tends to run more toward the Arts & Crafts style, which we did get to see in the Stratton house I wrote about before, Biggie's favorite house was a federal style colonial by architect C. Howard Crane that used to belong to Jack White. MiniMe loved it, too, but I think it was more about the gracious Airdale in the backyard. "It's a Neighborhood!" she said, like she had found The Definition according to Webster.

My ankles were hideously swollen at this point, so we left to check into our (thankfully) nearby hotel. We drove up Grand Boulevard, past houses that were once as grand as those we had just toured, but were now in shambles. I fight the sorrow. I've come to a place where I can see it for what it is. I believe that the change is necessary, inevitable, & gets much more than its' share of publicity as the best example of the worst things happening. I am just happy to see them occupied. Our hotel, The Hotel St. Regis, is a place I have spent a considerable amount of time in. It just recently underwent a substantial renovation & I was pleased. While our room was small, the view was directly down Cass Avenue, & the beds were the most comfortable we slept on for the entire trip. I rested for a bit & then changed my clothes to meet Biggie's father & sister for dinner.

They fought my choice of restaurants, Andiamo's, but I was going under the advice of the women I met from the Detroit Free Press, & I didn't relent. I could go on & on about this, but just know that Canadians, well, at least the ones I married into, don't like doing anything in Downtown Detroit. I forced their hand, because I am The Mean Daughter-In-Law & I travelled several hundred miles, with a preschooler & pregnant, the least they can do is let me pick the restaurant.

It was during the Stanley Cup playoffs, so the restaurant had tried to make things easier on themselves by limiting the menu & offering a buffet. I felt gypped. We all got the buffet, which was great, but I still had like 3 different entrees in my head that I was trying to pick from before I sat down. I indulged in an Ice Cream Puff Sundae covered with Saunder's Hot Fudge for dessert. This hot fudge is a Detroit standard & is actually a milk chocolate caramel, not the plastic-y dark brown most other places serve. I didn't eat all of the pastry, but I did scrape up every bit of that stuff that I could.

My father-in-law & I tend to clash, but I think we got along fairly well; we even sat next to each other. MiniMe decided almost immediately that she loves my sister-in-law, Biggie's younger sister. She chose to have her Aunt take her to the bathroom about five minutes after we met up, which isn't like her at all. Biggie's sister is a competitive body builder, yoga instructor, & licensed massage therapist. She was discussing yoga & MiniMe piped up to say that she wanted to show her Aunt her tree pose. I think her Aunt was touched that MiniMe knows yoga & she asked me to take a picture of them doing it together. She posted it on her facebook page the next day. It was sweet. (& yes, Kristine, that's the aforementioned Christmas tree)

The following day we had plans to meet up with some friends that were going downtown for the Tiger's game, that we hadn't seen since 2004. They tend to not do much downtown, as do many suburban Detroiters, except contribute to traffic to attend sport events, & then leave right away. I suggested a place practically right across the street from the ball park. We had a nice breakfast together & they asked us what our plans were for the day, which were to go down to a newer park on the riverfront where there is a carousel & a bike shop that is owned by a friend of my from college, Wheelhouse Detroit. MiniMe begged her new friends to come with us, & they did. While Kelli B., my friend from college, was doing a bike tour of her beloved Corktown that day & not at the shop, we had a nice time down at the riverfront. We all rode the carousel & MiniMe even got to ride the token mermaid.

As we walked along the river, I marveled at how clean the water is compared to my younger days, as well as to the inter-coastal waterway here in Fort Myers. I laid in the baby grass, again, and spoke to our unborn child with my heart. If I close my eyes, I can still go back there, & I have several times since we came home.

We dropped our friends off at the stadium & went back to the hotel. We then drove out to a town to the west, Belleville, where Biggie's brother & sister-in-law live. They had a small birthday party for my mother-in-law with mostly people I know, & a few I did not. I tend to not fit into the typical doting, hovering females, but am not welcomes into the activities of the men either. I tend to stay on the periphery, where I am okay, but now that MiniMe is older, it is more obvious. After most everybody left, Biggie's sister was kind enough to give me a small yet intense massage. It was needed, but I always feel bruised the next day, she is so strong. We went back to our hotel & we all slept well.

The next day we got up & checked out of the hotel, then went for breakfast at a fairly new restaurant I had read about located in Corktown, Le Petite Zinc. It was a cool, drizzly day & MiniMe was grumpy in her slightly too small raincoat. Honestly, breakfast would have been heavenly without her whiny, testy little attitude, but even with it, our meal was the best we ate on this trip. Biggie & I both had crepes with spinach, pine nuts & a salty cheese. The coffee was strong, not bitter, & fresh. I can understand why, even on a Monday morning, the sweet waitress had to rush around briskly & take help from the chef. We let MiniMe wander out the doorway into the garden where we could still see her as she picked up stones to put into the fountain & we rubbed our bellies, sipping the last of our coffee. We took our time leaving & MiniMe validated my perspective that she was cranky by falling asleep in the car as we drove back to my brother-in-laws.

Belleville, where they live, is closer to Ann Arbor than to Detroit. My brother & sister-in-law wanted to go to Zingerman's, a bourgeois, expensive, yet good deli in Ann Arbor that is pretty famous. The original deli is located in a converted victorian home in downtown Ann Arbor. Biggie loves a lot of their mail order catalog, but detests actually eating there, because the tables are either outside in a tent or really teeny tables upstairs. He likes space when he eats & if he pays $15 for a sandwich, it should have more prosciutto on it than what he has gotten there in the past. I lived in Ann Arbor for four years, & during most of that time I did not have a car, so I know it pretty well. I suggested we instead go to Zingerman's Roadhouse, an actual restaurant they established in 2004, inside a former steakhouse. It made me feel good to help his family discover a restaurant they didn't know about as well as find a compromise between what they wanted to eat & Biggie's issues. The meal itself was a trial for me because, again, MiniMe was really cranky. At one point I did take her back out to the car to sit for a few minutes to decompress, but it was still nice.

MiniMe took to this Aunt, as well, much easier than I expected her to. It was a shock to me to have help around in regard to her & to not be the sole person her endless stream of thoughts is directed at. Our last morning of the trip, I woke up to go to the room where she slept only to find my sister-in-law wedged into the sofa bed next to her. Apparently, MiniMe had nightmares the night before & my sister-in-law just climbed into bed with her. I was touched that she would do that for her, & appreciative that I got one last good last rest before we had to schlep back to the heat of Florida.

The trip home was brutal, uneventful, & this post is bordering on novella, so I will let that sweet gesture be the end. I wanted to get all this down for MiniMe to read later & before I forgot how things were. I have proofread it a few times, I feel like there are still some things to fix, but people are pestering me about our trip, so here it is.

raising my hackles

I was thinking about one of my favorite houses in Detroit that was on the market last year for a very reasonable price. It is known by some as the Mary Chase Stratton house, who was the founder of Pewabic Pottery. I lived right down the street from Pewabic for a while & I use to go there just to look & touch the magnificent tiles that they make. I went to the Pewabic website to revisit some of those tactile memories & I got a chill. 

Mrs. Stratton was an amazing woman. She grew up in the Upper Pennisula of Michigan,in what is called Copper Country because of the copper mines. Mrs. Stratton named the company after a river where she grew up near Hancock. Pewabic is an Ojibawa word used to describe copper, or the sheen of copper, which Mrs. Stratton replicated in her beautiful glazes. 

As I was reading about all of this, I felt a breeze on the nape of my neck, though no windows were open. I was thinking about my family that comes from the same place; my father's family. I felt, very strongly, the presence of my father. I could even smell the Swisher Sweets.

I don't like to say I believe in ghosts. I want & need to believe the loved ones that I have lost are away from this world, its' pain, & in a better place. All of them were lost to cancer. But when I put my hand to my belly, my heart sends out tentacles to wherever that place is. I cannot fathom that I will be having a child that my father will never know. When I heard these words in my head, I cried, but almost immediately, I felt comfort. I felt the comfort that my father, even though he is gone, believes in me. 

I am afraid to think about the things that I want too much because I am afraid of failing. I am afraid to miss home too much because I may not be able to return. My mother reminds me often that you can't go back home. But in that fear, I look up to see MiniMe at her easel. I hear my dad's giggle. I remember him telling me that it is okay to fail, but not okay to give up. 

So I will push forward with my plans for a business that will help us to be able to go wherever we want to go, regardless of the local economy. Biggie is taking us to Michigan for my birthday & I am giddy to get there. I can't hope too hard that he will find a way to want to go back. I have to keep reminding myself that MiniMe's birthday is right after we come back so I don't forget to plan it & send out invitations. This trip is eclipsing so many exciting things, even my first ultrasound, that it is speaking volumes to me about how much I miss Detroit. I can't wait to take pictures of the places I miss & share them with you.

Ready to Fire The Pimps

It's on the market. Our old home. For $187,900.00. 

In case you just landed here because of a random google search for something about pimps, our former home, that we let go back to the bank because we couldn't sell it for what we owed, that we had an offer on a year previously for $333k, is now for sale for less than half of that.

All over our county there are foreclosures, short sales, abandoned homes, bank owned property. There are some pretty great deals. But I think I've decided that I don't want to own anything for a while. See, I'm firing the banks.

There are so many people that I know, have read about, hear about through friends that have tried to renegotiate the terms of their mortgage, sell for slightly less than what they owe, these types of things, & the banks refuse to work with them. The banks are offered a certain amount of money to walk away from the previously negotiated situation. They refuse. So the people end up, like us, in bankruptcy, or in foreclosure. The banks end up having to pay attorney fees, cleaning, painting, lawn maintenance crews. In the end, these properties are sold, by the banks, for hundreds of thousands of dollars than they would have settled for, & the owners' credit wouldn't be in the toilet. It makes no sense.

The banks that are refusing to work with us are then asking for our tax dollars because they have so many derilect properties that they can't sell for what they own them for. It is absolutely the worst example of sound business practices I've ever seen. 

I forgot to elaborate on why I was so upset about the houses we've seen in Cape Coral. They are not built well. It feels like if you lean up against the wall you will leave a dent in it. There are miles & miles of these houses. Biggie says that because the cost of land was driven up so high so quick, the only place left to cut corners was in the construction. I think he's right. But although you can't tell from looking at the pictures I posted of the mafioso house, that's what it feels like. So we have a whole City full of abandoned, poorly built houses. I want out of here.

Home Hunters: Foreclosure Crisis Edition

A major portion of the stimulus package consists of the previously mentioned Neighborhood Stability Program (NSP), that provides down payment assistance as well as rehabilitation funding in areas hardest hit with foreclosures. For my Australian readers, Florida led the nation in 2007 with the highest percentage, 16.5%, of High-Risk Negative Amortization Loans. Lee County, where we live, has a foreclosure rate of over 11%. 

I really want to get out of here, but I have to balance what I want against the best interests of our family. We, well, mostly MiniMe & I, are looking at houses. I really wanted to be in downtown Fort Myers as there is a public arts magnet elementary school there. The girl just held yet another concert in our living room tonight where she sang her original work on jellyfish, which poetically emphasized that jellyfish indeed do not have hearts. She's 3, for crying out loud. She plays guitar & piano. No joke. No, I don't force her to sit & practice nor does she take lessons. But I digress. The point is that it seems like an arts magnet elementary + she = positive feelings about school.

The area we are now looking at houses in is the city of Cape Coral. It's killing me, my peeps. I mean, I'm a fricken Urban Planner. ("Um, we know that, crazee ladee. You ramble on about it in every fricken post!") I'm from the bellweather of failing Urban Policy. But, Cape Coral? There is a book about it entitled, "The Lie That Came True". It honestly was a real estate scam that so many people bought into it actually got built. If you look at it on google earth it's freaky. It's a bunch of crazy manmade canals to nowhere. The streets are all number names to the extreme ie. NE 12th Place, NE 12th Street, NE 12th Court, NE 12th Avenue. & it's in several of my textbooks as the perfect example of sucky suburbia. There's a fairly popular heavy rock band from there who entitled one of their albums "Cape Coma" as a reference to the city. I feel like I am one giant sellout. 

I can't ignore the incredible deals on homes in the City of Cape Coral, however. For the same amount of money, or less, we could buy a home that is twice the size of the one we are renting. I spent one Saturday afternoon driving round with MiniMe and Grammie & came upon an unsettling revelation, however.

The first home we went to look at is owned by Fannie Mae. It is  4 bedroom, 3 bathroom two-story house that was built in 1999. It is on a canal, has a 2-car garage & a pool. It's listed for $214k. Sounds nice, right? Well, it's not. 

When we walked into the house I was immediately struck by the prominence of the colors, or lack of them. The home is decorated in entirely black, white & grey. When the agent started discussing things that could make the house better, I suggested perhaps a centrally located globe with some neon lettering around it. He was all, "I think I've seen that somewhere before!" Um, uh-huh. 

Take a lookie at this gem of a bathroom. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the bathtub is pretty much in the middle of the room. Faux black marble? How about badly airbrushed fiberglass? Combined with the etched glass mermaid (which MiniMe seriously swooned over), complete with exposed nipples, I would feel obligated bathing there as if I were expected to put on some kind of show. 

But hey, if I did there was the built in radio/intercom system! When I asked the realtor if he knew what it was for, he lodged into some explanation to the effect of, "See, back in the 80's it was considered classy to have built in radio systems..." I cut him off. "No! This is for Issac Hayes!"

I was waiting for Tony Montana to show up, but I guess he's moved on.

The Rutabega & Turnip Club

I know I can't be the only one to see the ridiculousness here.

A preface:

My mom has a baby brother, the youngest in her big Catholic family, who lost his job in Michigan 2 years ago & moved down here to find work. He & his teenage daughter moved in with my mom. He found work. My mom wanted to buy a smaller house & saw that the market was going downhill. She decided to go ahead & buy a smaller house while my uncle would rent her house. She only charged him around half her payment. She saw that she wasn't going to get anywhere close to what she owed on her big house based on what was happening to us. She decided to let the house go back to the bank. Before she did, she did try to negotiate with the bank. She bought the house in 2004 for $220k & owed $173k. My uncle offered to buy it for $150k. The bank didn't take it. 

Yes, I have an affinity for rutabagas. I identify with them. I detest eating them, however. My love of the rutabaga comes from an analogy my dad made. In his Finnish culture, rutabagas are a staple, so there were many situations when I was a kid where I was sitting at the dining room table starring at a serving of them through teary eyes. A few times my dad slathered them with butter, trying to convince me they were great. Eventually, one evening he caved & they were never again put on my plate. He told me that as time went on, with us living separate lives for the most part of my childhood, rutabagas came to make him think of me. When I was in college, during one of our kitchen table talks, I launched into a diatribe on how rutabagas, turnips, cabbage & cauliflower were all in one smelly, gas-inducing, gross food category for me. My dad found this hilarious & told me that he couldn't help but think of the phrase, "You can't get blood from a turnip". He always saw it, as you're supposed to, as that the darned turnip just doesn't have it within itself. It's not being stubborn or selfish. The blood just ain't there. That's how I was about the rutabagas.  So the phrase became applicable to me, in some crazy mixed up way. When I would talk to my dad about my marriage & how Biggie was expecting something of me I just couldn't bring myself to do, my dad would say, "Well, Rutabeggie,..." We never had a talk about it. I knew what he meant. He got me.

A few weeks before my dad died, MiniMe came home with a photocopy of a definite root vegetable, colored with red & purple crayon, decorated with sequins. She was just over 2 years old at the time. When I asked her what it was she clearly replied, 

"Disco Rutabeggie". 

I LOVED it. It gave me one of those smile in my belly & heart feelings only parents & grandparents can get. I was saving it to send to my dad because it was just too priceless. I knew he would put it up in his truck & drive all over the country smiling at his girls' girls' silliness. He died before I could send it.

But, back to the banks. 

Our former home is no longer ours. If you were to go to the county tax appraiser's website & search for our last name, the same staggering list of eight properties comes up, but it's not right. (I though about using the word correct here, but I opted for right. It's more fitting.) There were a few things left in the house that we hadn't gotten out yet that I still wanted. Like the 4.25hp self-propelled mower I bought when we bought our first house, that I used up through my sixth month of pregnancy, & that my dad had taken all apart to clean, tune up & sharpen the blade when he came to visit me. I wanted to give it to my uncle as a gift. It's gone. As are our chaise lounges, planters, a floor lamp. The bank took the stance that the house was abandoned, changed the locks, & put those things in the landfill. I've got half a mind to go dig them out. It's so stupid & wasteful & lazy. & not right.

My mom's former house is up for sale for $46,500.00. 

I've thought about how it makes me feel to have been through this experience. It just doesn't make any sense. It gets worse.

I have a possible opportunity for a job. Two incorporated cities here are seeking to hire qualified people to run their Neighborhood Stability Programs, which I am very qualified to do. These programs give down payment assistance & rehabilitation money to people buying bank-owned or foreclosed properties. Ridiculousness: Currently we qualify for reduced cost preschool for MiniMe for me to go back to work & to buy a house through the program. If I took the job, we no longer qualify for either. Um. Work & never see sweet girl or stay home, send her to school on the cheap, & get a new house?

So, what was wrong with our money? If the bank had taken our buyers' $334,000 for our old home a year back, wouldn't they be in better shape now? I can't help but wonder how much the attorney charged the bank for the whole foreclosure process. Maybe they would have needed all these tax dollars to help them out if my money was good enough. Wait a minute. I pay taxes. I'm confused. My money wasn't good enough for the bank to take to pay for our house last year, but my money that went to pay taxes is good enough? 

Can't wait to see how much they list our house for. That's sure to send me to the liquor store.

I'm starting a club. When I get my sewing machine up again & some of Biggie's pants hemmed I've decided I'm making up some Disco Rutabega applique t-shirts. If you want one, you have to pay the membership dues. (cost of bourbon & root beer to drink while making said shirt)

We have infiltrated the perimeter...

Our new place is in a gated community. When I say gated community I don't mean a place where you pull up to get in & have to punch in a code or call the people you are coming to visit. This place has guards (we like to call them Condo Commandoes), 24 hours a day. We have to have a barcode sticker on our cars to get in the gate without pestering (& really, they subtlely let you know) the Commandoes. I don't like it.

The primary reason I wanted to live here is because there are over 9 miles of walking trails here. By walking trails, I mean paved paths through true conservation areas with actual trees, not just telephone poles with shrubs on top (aka palm trees). The community is also on a slow-moving river that connects to the intercoastal & in the winter manatees migrate up into the river because it's warmer. There are complementary kayak rentals for residents. We are going to be checking this out as soon as we can find a way to try it without MiniMe. 

But there are two golf courses here. Very swanky golf courses. With golfers that meet a certain demographic that seems to lead them to believe they can look down on individuals they feel don't meet their criteria to deserve politeness. Case in point: MiniMe & I headed out for a stroll down to the playground with our dogs. It was a good mile to mile & a half walk. After a week of moving, I thought she'd be glad to be outside for a long time with my undivided attention. They have bathrooms on the course that are locked, opened by keys for the golf carts. MiniMe, being 3 years old, can't always anticipate very well yet that she might have to go to the bathroom before we reached the playground & doesn't quite understand why someone would lock her out from a toilet. As we were walking, there was one such bathroom directly across the street from our path & she very clearly asked to please use one. Thankfully, there were golfers at the bathroom. When I explained to MiniMe that the doors were locked & one of golfers were going to have to let us in, she walked right up to one man & asked, "Can you please let me go to the bathroom?" She was polite. She was brave. She was assertive. I was proud. The guy first acted like he didn't hear her, so she persisted with her previous request, but now proceeded with "Excuse me!". The guy finally looked down his nose at her, literally, gave her a one-sided smirk, & said, "Are you walking your dogs in your pajamas?" Completely bypassing her request. Completely oblivious to her manners & genuine patience. I was trying to get the dogs on a shorter leash, so I was too overwhelmed to actually speak up before that group rode off on their carts, snarkily chuckling at how smart they are that they can demean a 3 year old. The starter was just on the other side of the building, thankfully, so I asked him to let her use that bathroom. He seemed a little put out, but did grant us access. 

I have to explain that I was once the assistant manager at a private golf club in Ann Arbor, where the likes of Tom Monahan, Bill Clay Ford are members. I'm not a golfer, but I worked as a waitress in the clubhouse for 2 years & the members were so pleased with my service & attention to detail that I was put in this position. I can't imagine any of those members ever hesitating to allow a child access to a bathroom. 

This brings us to a brief discussion on gated communities. I don't like them. They don't make me feel safer. They don't make me more likely to approach a neighbor or wave at a passerby while walking the dogs. I do those things anyway. I don't like my visitors having to be screened before they can come to my house. More than anything, I don't like the idea that someone has to be qualified to be where I am. I'm not the first person, certainly not the first planner, to bring this up. I'm just reiterating my opinion, now more enlightened from the experience. I don't like someone else deciding who can be a part of my community. 

I've thought about some way I can say something that isn't redundant or obvious about the whole contrived community, here. What I've come up with is that I want to take a moment to recognize the blog community I am becoming a part of. The community where my old friend can stop by & catch up, where my neighbors know me by what has been written instead of the cars we drive, our dogs, or as the ones who never take their garbage cans back in & darn it, we've got to report them. I like this community where I can ogle over Rebecca's darling Fable, marvel at Sarah's preserves, worry over Ivy, giggle at Mimi, even offend Jim. It's much more diverse than reality while still maintaining some sort of relativity. 

But hey, the view out our backdoor is pretty swell...

Letter to a Home

Between the years of 1993 & 1998 I moved 14 times. Yes, three of those times were to dorm rooms, but I still count them because they did require a major analysis of my belongings, paring them down to only the bare necessities, to fit into a very small space. When I think of those moves now, one thing is very noticeable to me regarding then in comparison to now. The majority of those moves were expected, except for somewhere around number 8, where I had a literal crackhead steal most of everything I owned, which to her credit did make things pretty simple. I did not fret much then about how I was going to pack, how things would be relocated, what would get broken. I occasionally made the decision of the next place within days if not hours before the actual move. Like I've said before, I was a leaf that went where the wind blew me.

We have made a decision on the next place we will be living, signed the lease, paid our money. It was stressful for all of us. No, it doesn't meet any of the qualities that MiniMe had requested & it is far out from most of the places we like to go. Regardless, MiniMe told us she likes it. She includes, "I want to go to the new house!" in her daily list of laments. We are happy with our decision & it is truly a nice house. I'm still not okay. It's not the new houses' fault. 

It's not the loss of our current house that is bothering me. It's not the bankruptcy. The decision to file for bankruptcy is unquestionably the most right decision we have made in the past year. There are things about our current home that I will be glad to be relieved of. It is the loss of our home that I am mourning. 

A sense of place, experiences tied to the context of the environment, is a very essential part of my personality. It is why I studied architecture & became a planner. The concept of place is something that preoccupies most of my thoughts. Very many important things have happened to me, to us, in this place. This home. 

This is the place where I sat & nursed MiniMe for hour upon hour. I painted this room "Blue Collar" the second week we lived in the house, when MiniMe was just 3 months old, & we had no power because of Hurricane Wilma. Biggie put the beautiful crown molding up, using the compound mitre saw I got him our first Christmas in this house. Where I sang Audra, Nick Drake, Innocence Mission to her. The very last time, when I sang Into the Mystic, into her ear, while my father listened over the phone. Just this past Christmas she realized that as I was singing Barbara Streisand's The Best Gift, I was telling her that she is The Best Gift I've ever received, in this very spot. We still sit here to read bedtime stories together every night before bed. The majority of the most profound conversations she & I have had have been in this place. We have discovered each other, more than any other place, in this place.

This is the place where she took her very first steps, the Wednesday before Mother's Day, in 2006. She was so nonchalant about it all. I couldn't comment for what seemed like forever because it looked so strange to see this little 15 pound person actually upright & independently mobile. I was mesmerized.

This is the place that I was the very last time I spoke to my Dad. I was stripping the wallpaper off of the wall. My mom was there helping me. He was talking about things he had seen on his route the past week, driving through the Upper Peninsula. He told me he was so glad he had a daughter that understood him; that understood why he preferred driving on little State Routes where there was little traffic, simple people, simple food. When I told him my mom was there with me, he asked me to tell her that he thought of her every Monday, when he crossed over the Laughing Whitefish River, as they had made that trip when they were married, on his little Triumph. I marked the sense of nostalgia in my heart. It is the place where I was the last time I got to hear him tell me he loved me.

This is the place I was standing when my step-mother told me my father was dead. She had called, hung up after 3 rings, before I could make it to the phone, & then called back not 2 minutes later. I had sensed something was wrong when I went to answer the phone. I had dreaded that moment for years. I paced in this doorway, not crying, just nodding, listening to the flood of sorrow my step-mother poured over me. I stayed in that spot to call my husband to tell him. My mother, too. I remember thinking that maybe if I stayed in that spot I would be able to continue to not cry. 

This is the place that Biggie was sitting when we healed our marriage. He said awful things to me & I let him. I let him say them, meaning I actually listened, because I knew he didn't mean it. I knew, finally, that it wasn't about me. It was about everything before me. He saw that I let it go. He knew that I had every right to be justified, self-righteous, hurt. He saw that I let it go because We Are More Important. Whatever it is, We Are More Important. He acknowledged the sacrifice of my spirit to do this. That acknowledgement brought us back & gave us hope.

Although we lived in another house when we were married, when MiniMe was born, it is in this house that I became a mother & the mother of my husband's children. This place is inextricably tied to the history of our lives, of our family. I am sad that we have to leave it under these circumstances. It has served us well. I have been proud of it. 

I wish we could know the next occupants. There are so many places, houses, homes that are losing their stories & context. It's messing up so many families. In the telling of stories, you have the who, the what, to what extent, & the where. For so many, the where is being forcibly & traumatically changed.

post script- I could have developed the concept of place & its' meaning more fully, more eloquently, but I'm too weepy. I wanted to get this out there & done. Maybe after we are closer to the light at the end of this particular tunnel I will come back to this, but for now, it is what it is. & yeah, I might be a little busy for the next month, but I'm around. I'm sure I'll have some funnier, more uplifting stories of moving antics.

Joy & Pain

Yep. I'm singing Rob Bass. (Pump it up! Pump it up, now!) Hey, I never had Garden Weasel bangs.

So, the pain part. We have been given a court date on our house for foreclosure. You typically have 60 days after the court date to get your stuff out before it is no longer available to you. I have to find a place for us to live. During the holidays. With a 3-year old in tow. A 3-year old who REALLY wants to live in a 2-story house where her bedroom is closer to ours & has a pool. Sigh. 

Also, the dealership is raising our health insurance premium. Again.

Moving on... (both literally & figuratively)

The joy part. Christmas jumper #1 is complete. It has been worn to a birthday party for our friend Lolly (Lorelai) on Sunday & again today. It is super-cute. My favorite part is the trim on the hemline. 

She's got it bad for Tommy the Elf, who is in this print. You can't tell very clearly from the pics, but I also sewed little lightbulb charms along the pockets. 

She really does appreciate that she has a mom that does this stuff for her. 

I also am very excited for Christmas morning. We are giving MiniMe the dollhouse I was given by my parents when I was 3. Seen as how MiniMe was born 2 days before my birthday, she is basically exactly the age I was when I got it. My parents, who had been divorced for a while at the time, actually worked together to buy it for me. It was relinquished to me by my mom when she was pissed at me for something & not speaking to me. Apparently she didn't see that episode of Gilmore Girls. To her credit, she did cart the thing down here, even if her second husband actually threw away the toddler bed my dad made for me. Bygones. I asked Biggie to make a platform for it with casters so that the house can be turned around. It always annoyed me as a kid that I couldn't really access the front of the house because it was up against the wall. He rocks & made a backyard for it, too. He's asking about grass for the yard. He's giving me seriously unpleasant flashbacks of making models in architecture school. 

I also have to finagle what Santa is bringing. MiniMe told Santa she wants a space station. Seriously. Last year, when she was 2-years old, she asked for a 'pinano' & a 'gee-tar'. She's killing me. We've had talk(s) about how Santa would have a really hard time fitting a space station on the sleigh. I just don't want to stretch the whole Santa discussions too long because we haven't exactly decided how we are going to handle the day when she looks at us & point blank asks if there is a Santa.

Last Christmas she picked this super-cute pseudo vintage book, Miss Flora McFlimsey's Christmas Eve, from the library. I seriously knew it by heart in 3 days, & it ain't a short book. I didn't mind; it's a great story. Flora is an old-school doll living in the attic that comes down to peek at the Christmas tree & gets suckered into being a present since that slacker Santa lost a doll on his way. The other dolls make fun of her. I don't want to ruin it, but it all works out in the end & I love the look MiniMe gets on her face when we read the last page. 

Well, it turns out that Flora McFlimsey was an actual doll back in the '30's that the author used as a model for the series of books she wrote about Flora. Madame Alexander made a Flora McFlimsey doll last year & let's just say that I'm crossing my fingers that she is a welcome substitute for the space station. Yes, I love that my 3 year old girl wants a space station, but I highly suspect that it has more to do with the fact that Caillou asks for one for Christmas & less to do with ours trips to the MOSI museum. Cross your fingers, y'all.

I am a leaf

I go where the wind blows me.

This was one of those things I always said when someone asked me where I wanted to go when I was in college. I always think of it this time of year, when I'm stuck in the tropics, with no falling leaves.

Considering the current status of our lives, this phrase has new meaning. The wind was kind-of at a stand still for a while. I was feeling like we weren't going to get anywhere. Now it fells like a category 5 hurricane. Almost daily I feel our next destination is changing. I feel lost & guilty & like a bad parent. I can't figure out what is in our best interests.

Tina Joy & I have an ongoing fantasy about winning the lottery. I think it's something like more than 70% of women that do. Well, when (ha!) I win, what I would do is pretty simple. I'd move back to Detroit. I'd buy one of the many great houses for sale in the City, I'd make it sustainable. We'd start a business that would employ some of the very hard working unemployed. We'd use some of that vast abandoned land. I was thinking I'd like to start an urban plant nursery, an urban farm, a RIE Institute. Of course, I'd become a rablerouser, attending all of the Planning Commission & City Council meetings. I'd know the Master Plan, City Code, Historic District Ordinances by heart. I'd probably get myself shot.

Where we are with economics in this country right now, I can't help but think of one of my favorite buildings in Detroit, The Fisher Building. It is located on the northwest corner of West Grand Boulevard & Second Street in the New Center District. I used to park my car in the garage there & walk through this building everyday to get to my office. It is resplendent. To try to begin to describe the glorious materials I stepped on with my vinyl, Payless black mary janes everyday, would be ridiculous. The building was commissioned by the Fisher Brothers, the founders of Fisher Body Company, which became part of GM, and designed by Albert Kahn. It was originally to be the western-most building of a series of three structures, with an even taller more grandiose building at the intersection of West Grand & Second, with a sister building opposite that. The stock market crash of 1929 stopped the project & only the one tower was built. There is the General Motors building kitty corner across West Grand, the Hotel St. Regis farther east, and the Albert Kahn Building farther down Second. But the Fisher Building has always been such a standard of decadence, lavishness in architecture to me. As a kid that grew up in the last big recession, the child of Irish & Finnish temperance, this was excess.

My husband had never been there before he met me. I took him there on Saturday afternoon before we were engaged. It was empty. We felt like we were the only people in the building; that we had just happened to find the one door that hadn't been locked. We walked across the skybridge to the New Center Building to find a security guard practicing his saxaphone. When he saw us, he started playing Mona Lisa. While we danced, I stepped on a little green glass bead. I still have that bead in my jewelry box as a momento of that day when my husband grew to understand my position in this dichomtomy.


I was a girl scout that was taught to always leave things better than they were before I got there. When I left the far north & affluent suburbs to go downtown, it was a complex experience. I heard stories from an early age of the riots in 1967. I knew that people moved out of the City to escape violence. I could not grasp how it was okay for an entire City to be left to rot. I know who Aubrey Pollard was. I understand the fear & frustration. I still cannot reason with the tremendous resources being abandoned while so much mediocrity is heralded elsewhere. That's kind-of my unspoken philosophy as an Urban Planner. Why would you go & make another mess when you haven't cleaned up the one you already made?

So, I am this Pollyanna white girl who wants to swoop in & save this place. I have long dreamed of living in a grand old house that smells of lemon oil from the woodwork with trees older than my grandparents growing in the yard. I want to take my kids to Belle Isle to play in the park. I want to take them to the DIA, the Science Center, to see The Nutcracker, which I was in as a child, at Christmas. The Zoo. I love the feeling of standing on the riverfront with my eyes closed & thinking about the millions of people that made this great place. I hear their voices shouting out for justice for this place that has been orphaned by millions. I can't ignore the sound. It speaks to my heart. & I have a big heart.

My husband knows this about me & does want me to be able to try, but I am scared. So many people think I should be scared for the safety of our child, for the cost of taxes, the cost of maintaining an old home, the reality of the corruption. What I am really scared of is that it would be the wrong decision to go back because the economy is going to get worse. My husband wants me to consider moving our family to Canada, where he is from. I think of how lightened the burdens of the last 10 years of my life would have been without having to worry about the cost of healthcare, the cost of my education, & I want better for our child.

I am abandoned by my country. I am disappointed in how it has failed my family. My husband, who came here, got an engineering degree with no financial assistance. He has applied to become a citizen 3 times & has not been able to complete the process. Before he met me, the second application was lost in the World Trade Center. He has worked as a car salesman & sales manager between 60 and 80 hours a week for the last 7 years of his life. He faces racism almost daily; in Michigan where they assumed he was Arabic, in the south where they assume he is Cuban, followed by the ridiculous apologies when they find out he's Italian. He has paid around $70k into social security, & I get emails where people ask me to sign some ridiculous petition that say he shouldn't be entitled to that money because he isn't a citizen, because they don't understand their own country's laws.

I watch my husband, who does not have the opportunity to vote, watch the debates & read about the canidates for president. I love him so much. I have seen him with tears in his eyes in the last few weeks more than once. He has absolutely no problem supporting Barack Obama. Since he cannot vote, he has donated some of his very hard earned money. He has not once tried to tell me who I shoud vote for.

I had lunch with a friend today at this great restaurant that was owned by a woman from Greece. She made me the best gyro I've had since we left Detroit. She came out & sat with us & our kids because her business was so slow. After we talked for a while, the conversation turned to the economy. She had tears in her eyes as she talked about how as a child she was determined to become an American one day, because in the US anyone who works hard enough can make a great life for themselves. She said she felt cheated. She is about to lose her business.

I am broken. I am torn between standing my ground & trying to fight in this country, or leaving for Canada where I believe my family may have more opportunities. I am on the brink of giving up one of the greatest dreams of my life. It is crushing.

How it's affecting us

This is the post where I just lay it all out there. I suspect that I will probably try to write the bulk of it & break it up. I tend to write a bit of lengthy posts, I've found.

I'm pretty scared. The whole bailout situation has me freaked. I'm reading a lot, but I can't say it's really helping. The first class I ever failed in college was Macroeconomics. But come on, the prof used an overhead projector with the full range of Vis a Vis palette to make his graphs "explaining" (very loose description) the concepts, but he was left handed. I'm left handed. I know better than to try to write with mediums that smear. Bygones. I have read enough to know that there are some major problems with either scenario, the two scenarios being bail out or do nothing. I want to write about how this all applies to us.


As I wrote previously, my husband declared bankruptcy. It's not that we were unable to pay our bills, it was that it would be stupid to. The only reason we could afford to pay for it all is because we are incredibly frugal. We have been trying to get out of Florida for two years & we we're unable to get out of our house without paying money out. Taking our down payment & the lost equity, we have lost $270,000 on this house alone. We are not destitute. We are not whining. We didn't do anything stupid. We are not expecting anyone to help us or bail us out. We are trying to cut our losses & move on.

We have been socking away between 3 & 4k every month, except for the month we went to Oregon. (Let me just say that 10 days without bugs was worth way more to me.) I have been entertaining MiniMe, putting gas in my car, & feeding us, healthfully mind you, on $900 a month. The dealership that Big works at is huge & it boads well for him to work there. As a salesman, last year he made almost 4 times as me with my silly little degree did in any year. He was the highest selling salesman for every month but 2 in 18 months, including last September, when my dad died & he was gone for 10 days. He was promoted to a sales manager last spring & has had the most number of deals as well as holding the highest gross. He took a paycut to be promoted, but it meant he'd have to take his 2 days off a week, unlike when he was a salesman & often worked 10 days nonstop.

In case you didn't read it on the news, auto sales are down to levels that they were in 1993. Last week he had a customer with a credit score of 780, made $200k a year, that couldn't get approved for an $800 payment. Today he was demoted back to sales. In a way, it's okay because he'll be making more money than if he stayed in management. But again, the blood-turnip thing.

Our plan has been for him to stay there because it is good for him to get management experience there. We are living rent free. We wanted to stay here until we got a certain amount of money saved up & then move to wherever we are going to go. We were expecting the longest it would take is two years. We've watched craigslist to see how much we would have to pay for rent if we get kicked out. We've discussed how we should try to get our bank to let us lease back our house instead of moving.

I know I could go back to work, but I need to explain what this means. The school that MiniMe attended up until May was $13k. This is for the school year only, and only until 2:45pm. I tried to find work in Planning here that will let me be done by then & it is not out there. If I went outside of my field I would not make much more than it costs to send her to school. I know, look at other schools. There aren't really any other options out there for us or her. This place is not family oriented in so many ways. We tried another school for 3 months last year & it was pretty disastrous. She had just turned 2 & told us all she wanted for Christmas, in July, was to go back to her old school. This is how I ended up where I am.

I should mention that we have had a huge cloud inside our house all summer long. I had a lumpectomy in June that I regret. I know, my life is sacred, & it is to my husband, too. But the literal shakedown of the various doctors has been alarming. Our insurance is supposedly good & we are up to almost $6k for the outpatient procedure. It is very hard for my Canadian husband to pay these bills. Especially after he has to pay over $500 a month for this insurance. I checked to see if I would have had to wait to have this surgery in Canada. I would have had to wait one day longer than I did here in Florida to have the surgery, unless my doctor felt this was too long, in which case they could schedule it sooner. But I probably wouldn't have had to have the surgery, because they would have done some sort-of more detailed radiology technique that would have shown that it was just breast tissue. Oh, & that would have been free, too.